Book Review: Shopping while Black: Consumer racial profiling in America

Abstract

Shopping While Black: Consumer Racial Profiling in America is a moderately brief book that presents the history of and research on consumer racial profiling (CRP). However, its mild brevity is not indicative of its depth. Despite being to the point, the book is an intellectually dense and comprehensive examination of its topic. It should be noted that Distinguished Professor Shaun L. Gabbidon and Professor George E. Higgins’ book is a part of the Criminology and Justice Studies series, which publishes books intended for undergraduate and graduate students, but written in a fashion that may also be of benefit to a lay audience. Although it is the authors’ recommendation that Shopping While Black is best suited for students and researchers working in the domains of Criminology, Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Security Studies, and Law, I concur that the book would additionally be a worthwhile introduction to CRP for mainstream readers seeking to acquire knowledge on racial profiling in shopping. According to Gabbidon and Higgins (2020), consumer racial profiling “occurs when a shopper is singled out for unwarranted bad treatment/service and/or criminal suspicion based on their racial/ethnic background” (p. xii). Although it is the authors’ position that CRP is a subject sorely in need of more research, they meticulously sift through a substantial amount of quantitative and qualitative research throughout the course of their book. They begin by unpacking the historical context and development of CRP. While walking readers through this, the authors note that profilers did not always intuitively link black people as the primary suspects of shoplifting. The book illustrates that, in fact, prior to the mid-20th century, wealthy white women were thought to be the most frequent retail thieves. Before that time period, blacks were typically unable to enter white-owned brick and mortar businesses due to the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896—which of course legalized segregation. It was after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, as well as the 1960s Civil Rights Acts, that CRP became a widespread phenomenon. Many white business owners were unhappy with being forced to serve the black customers they saw as nothing more than violent criminals, and consequently, CRP became a normal experience for black consumers. Race and Justice